You don’t need to pay anything to have your Website hosted, if you’re happy to have advertising on it. Jimdo offers a free version of its Website service, but we’re looking at the Pro product, here, which builds on the Free with extras like a proper domain name, email address, newsletter and site statistics. See Group test: what's the best web-design software?
Jimdo was keen for us to mention that 1&1 uses an ‘outdated version of our software’ and Jimdo Pro is certainly better looking and slicker in its approach than MyWebsite. It offers fewer predesigned templates, but they're generally good-looking and minimalist in appearance. They give sites a modern feel, though some colour scheme choices are a little wayward. The template we chose used dark grey text on black by default, which was very hard to read. Take a look at Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5 too.
As with 1&1 MyWebsite, you click on any object on a page to edit its contents. The text editor offers basic formatting and photos are automatically optimised for resolution on import. You can resize them on the fly, too, which is more convenient than selecting from a list of stock sizes.
As well as text, graphics and dividing lines, you can choose to add a wide range of other objects through a pop-up selector. These include tables, photo galleries and forms. Social media connections are made with Facebook, Twitter and Google+ feeds, but there’s also Google Maps and video, where you specify a link, rather than being tied to using YouTube.
E-commerce is supported, but with a rather low limit of 15 items. Jimdo's Business package is designed for more serious internet traders, putting no limit on the number of items. PayPal is the only electronic payment method, though the service can handle cheques and invoice payments, too.
You can add up to 3,000 pages to a Jimdo Pro site, subject to a storage limit of 5GB, and there’s no bandwidth limit, so you can attract as much traffic as you want. The package includes a domain name of your choice (now including .co.uk) – subject to it not being already taken – and a linked email account with a separate storage allowance of 10GB.
